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The glacier — known as Jakobshavn , which sits on Greenland ’s west slide — is still contributing to sea degree rise , but it ’s lose less ice than expected . Instead of thinning and crawfish inland , its ice is thickening and pull ahead toward the ocean , the research worker come up .
The big doubt : Why is this bump ? [ image : Greenland ’s Gorgeous Glaciers ]
The front of Iceland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, where icebergs calve off.
After much detective work , a team of scientists from the United States and the Netherlands found that the glacier is likely growing due to colder ocean currents . In 2016 , a stream that passes by Jakobshavn Glacier was cooler than usual , making water near the glacier the stale they ’d been since the mid-1980s .
This tank flow issue forth from the North Atlantic Ocean , more than 600 international nautical mile ( 966 kilometers ) in the south of the glacier , fit in to data fromNASA ’s Oceans Melting Greenland ( OMG ) mission and other observation .
The finding took the scientist completely by surprise . " At first , we did n’t believe it , " study confidential information research worker Ala Khazendar , a scientist at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , California , enjoin in a instruction . " We had somewhat much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years . " But the cold-blooded water is n’t a one - off . information from OMG record that the water has been cold now for three years in a row .
A wider view of the calving front of Jakobshavn Glacier, as seen from a NASA research plane flying overhead.
It appears that the cold pee is the result of a climate pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation ( NAO ) , which make the northern Atlantic Ocean slowly switch between warm and cold piss about once every 20 years , the research worker said . The cold form just recently start , and has cooled the Atlantic Ocean in general , they said . In add-on , some extra cooling system of the waters aroundGreenland ’s southwest coasthelped keep the glacier chilly .
But this crisp change wo n’t last forever . Once the NAO mood figure flip back , the Jakobshavn will likely start melting faster and thinning again , the researchers pronounce .
" Jakobshavn is get a temporary gaolbreak from this climate pattern , " Josh Willis , of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal police detective of OMG , said in the statement . " But in the long outpouring , the ocean are warm . And insure the ocean have such a huge impact on the glaciers is bad news for Greenland ’s shabu sheet . "
Huge ice loss … then small gain
scientist havewatched Jakobshavnwith headache for decades . After losing its ice shelf in the other 2000s ( an ice shelf forces a glacier to flow more tardily into the sea , like dirt clogging a drainage ) , Jakobshavn began losing methamphetamine hydrochloride at an alarming pace . Between 2003 and 2016 , its heaviness ( from top to bottom ) dwindled by 500 feet ( 152 meters ) .
But in 2016 , the amniotic fluid flowing from Greenland ’s southerly tip to its western side cool down by more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit ( 1.5 degrees Celsius ) . Meanwhile , the NAO climate pattern make the Atlantic Ocean near Greenland to cool by about 0.5 F ( 1 C ) between 2013 and 2016 . By the summertime of 2016 , these cool amnionic fluid reached the glacier , and they are likely the reason that Jakobshavn slowed its rate of chicken feed red to the ocean , the researchers said . [ paradigm : Greenland ’s Dramatic Landscape ]
In all , Jakobshavn grew about 100 feet ( 30 chiliad ) tall between 2016 and 2017 , the researchers found . But , as mentioned , the glacier is still impart to ocean horizontal surface cost increase worldwide , as it ’s still misplace more meth to the sea than it is gather from Charles Percy Snow accumulation , the researcher allege .
The findings shake off light on how much ocean temperature can bear upon glacier development , articulate Tom Wagner , a NASA Headquarters programme scientist for the cryosphere , the frozen part of Earth .
" The OMG foreign mission deploy fresh technologies that allowed us to observe anatural experimentation , much as we would do in a laboratory , where pas seul in sea temperature were used to control the flow of a glacier , " Wagner , who was not involved in the study , said in the statement . " Their determination — peculiarly about how promptly the ice responds — will be important to projecting sea level rising slope in both the penny-pinching and distant future . "
The study was published online March 25 in the journalNature Geoscience .
Originally published onLive Science .
